


can't breathe without you (but i have to)

by nevernevergirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:30:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal's gone, but Neal's been gone before, and sometimes-- most times, she thinks she's more used to losing him than having him. </p><p>Post-Quiet Minds. Emma grieves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't breathe without you (but i have to)

She's doing okay, she thinks. 

She's not  _okay,_ not really. The oldest friend she had just died in front of her. Her son just lost his father. Neal's  _gone_. But Neal's been gone before, and sometimes-- most times, she thinks she's more used to losing him than having him. 

So she's doing okay.

She cried when it happened, and that night's sort of a blur. The funeral sucked, and then everything went to hell in a totally new direction, and she's sort of grateful she's got something else to  _do_.

Because it hits her, sometimes--not in big, overwhelming bursts, but in the way stupid little things tear at your skin and rip holes in everything you've carefully held together.

 ---

 Promises made in a rundown motel room over a decade ago don't make her a widow, but Neal didn't really have anyone else. A father in a cage, a son who can't remember him, a woman who never really got the chance to be his step-mother.

And her. His...whatever.

People line up haphazardly in awkward clusters to give her a hug and pat her on the back and offer their condolences, and she steels herself up to take them all, because Neal deserves  _someone_.

But she doesn't think they get it. She's not sad because she lost something. She never got the chance to have it.

\---

The room at Granny's she's sharing with Henry is two doors down from the one Neal stayed in before Neverland and curse reversals and wicked witches. Everyone else's things seemed to fall back into place when Storybrooke came back-- she'd found her own baby blanket in closet of her old room at the loft a couple of days ago. She walks past his door and wonders if it looks like his apartment back in New York, untouched and frozen in time save for a thin layer of dust. She thinks about his unmade bed and his shirts hanging up in the closet. She wonders if they still smell like him and stops stock still on the stairs when she realizes she's not even sure what he smelled like anymore. 

\---

Gold doesn't look at her, when Zelena drags him along like a dangerous pet for her little showdown with Regina. He doesn't really look at any of them, but he doesn't look at her and all she can think is  _the last time he looked at me, his son was dying in my arms_ and then she's not seeing Gold anymore-- just an identical pair of eyes staring up at her, lifeless. She swallows hard.

"You want to fight someone, Zelena? Fight me."

_\---_

_"_ Do you have a picture of him?" Henry asks, because he can't remember he doesn't need one.

She did, once. A photo booth strip they'd taken in mall on a rainy day with the loose change Neal had dug up in the backseat of the bug. She'd sat on his lap and they'd made faces and kissed in the last one and she'd pretend they were normal kids on a normal date doing normal dumb things. They'd stuck it on the dash, and it had fallen onto her lap when she took the bug back after her jail time. She'd crumpled it up and thrown it out the window.

"No, kid, I don't," she says, ruffling Henry's hair. "You look just like him, though.  _Just_  like him."

\---

Sometimes, it feels okay. Like the tiny tears at her skin and holes in her walls are manageable. They sting, and that sucks, but she can patch them over, smooth across a band aid and grit her teeth and move  _on_  while she waits for them to heal.

And sometimes she knows: too many little tears, too many tiny holes. One day, all it's gonna take is one more rip on top of all the others.

And then she'll be shredded.

\---

Regina fiddles with the ring she still wears, sometimes. Emma's not sure when she started noticing it. She stares at Robin like he's every wish she's never made, and she fiddles with her ring and sometimes she looks at it and it's like she's not really  _there_ , for a second. 

Emma wonders why she never noticed before and ignores the tug her stomach telling her  _you know why_.

Robin looks at Roland with a twinge of sadness you'd barely recognize as he takes Regina's hand, ring and all. Emma wraps an arm around Henry and feels the weight of her necklace heavy against her chest and thinks  _God, it never ends, does it?_  

\---

"Promise me you'll both be happy," he'd said.

"You're a fucking asshole," she thinks.

She shoves the dream catcher to the bottom of her suitcase as she packs for New York. It tears, a little, and she's too angry to care.

\---

She's only been to the cemetery twice since it happened. Once for the funeral, and once with Henry after his memories came back. She told herself there was too much going on, before, but the witch has been taken care of for weeks. She doesn't have an excuse. She wants to make one. 

Eventually, she sucks it up. She stands in front of the gravestone, and she's still not sure what she's supposed to do. 

 _Beloved Son_. It's not wrong, but it's not all right, either. She makes a mental note to see if Regina can and  _and Father_  to it. Henry would like that, she thinks. 

She can't make herself fit on a gravestone, though. How do you say  _he was the first person I really knew_  and  _I loved him when I wanted to stop_  and  _almost home_? They were never easy enough to be etched into limestone. Maybe she's always known that. Doesn't make it fair.

She takes a deep breath and places her hand on the stone. It's cold, and it grounds her. 

"Hey, you," she mumbled. "This really sucks." 

She closes her eyes, because that's the part where Neal's supposed to let out a barking laugh. 

"I know what I promised," she says shakily. "And we will be, I swear. I can be. I think I can."

She takes a deep breath and her heart fills with  _I wanted to save him_  and  _we never found Tallahassee_  and  _I was trying to get you home_. She opens her eyes and squares her shoulders.

"But I fucking miss you," she says, voice edged with steel. "I have for a really long time. I hope you...God, I hope you knew that."

"Mom?"

She turns around, sharply. 

"Henry?" she frowns. "What are you doing here?"

"Mom takes me sometimes, on the days I stay with her," he shrugs, gesturing out toward Regina, leaning against her car at the edge of the cemetery, watching him carefully. Emma frowns.

"You never told me you wanted to come here," she says, softly. 

"Yeah," Henry kicks at the ground, idly. "I didn't know if you'd want to."

Emma takes a sharp breath at that. Henry watches her carefully.

"Mom, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm--" she cuts herself off, automatically. "No, not right now," she says, quietly. 

Henry gives her a small smile, barreling forward to wrap his arms around her, tight. She hugs him back, breathing him in, letting herself cry a little against his hair because he hugs just like his father.

She's not okay. But she's living with that.


End file.
